Curator Karly Wildenhaus requested submissions of take away art from the personal collections of individuals, and not surprisingly, she amassed a great set of work hailing from places as far away as London and Antwerp, in addition to more local pieces from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Brooklyn, to name a few. (You can read the full exhibition description here and see additional images from the show.)

Iâ€™ve always been intrigued by the idea of audience participation and multiplicity in art â€“ two ideas which take away art knowingly references, but then pushes to a new level by creating an entirely removable installation.

Whatâ€™s so compelling about the take away object is that audience participation is fundamental to the piecesâ€™ meaning as a whole. The viewer, at zero cost, leaves with a multiple, and at the artistâ€™s encouragement, is sent out into the world to re-appropriate the object in whatever way they see fit. This element of freedom, and the open-ended nature of the artworkâ€™s new life, is both exciting and disruptive to the ways in which people traditionally experience art (i.e. in an institutional setting).

As an integral component of the work, viewers are invited to step into the role of collector, a role traditionally inaccessible to the masses for a variety of reasons. And for this particular moment, the â€œnew collectorsâ€ dictate the rules of the game by choosing when, where and how to display their newfound pieces, all the while challenging the idea that increased production (many multiples) devalues artwork both in a market sense and in an ideological sense.

Walking through the show, I found myself not necessarily thinking about what it meant for these objects to be literally â€œtwice removedâ€ (initially from the museum or gallery, and then yet again by Karly for the purposes of this show), but instead lost in thought about the period in between â€“ what life was like for the object inside the collectorâ€™s home. Sure, displaying the work as individual pieces this second time around reinforces the transient nature of take away art, and highlights how insubstantial the materials actually are (candy, postcards, pins, ribbon etc.). But, the pieces I was most drawn to were those that the collector had personalized, imbuing the object with an additional layer of meaning and sentimentality.

Itâ€™s been weeks since I saw the show, and I really havenâ€™t stopped thinking about it since. The weather is starting to improve, so make the trek to Golden Age to see Twice Removed before itâ€™s over. If for some reason you canâ€™t make it, there will be an accompanying website and pamphlet published by Golden Age after the showâ€™s run.

Elizabeth Corr received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in African Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her graduate work focused on contemporary African art in post-apartheid South Africa. She lives in Chicago and works at NRDC, an environmental nonprofit.